


Physician, Heal Thyself

by happygolovely



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Hotel Artemis, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Attempted Murder, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Dark Comedy, Ethical Dilemmas, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Medical Inaccuracies, Past Relationship(s), Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Temporary Character Death, The Court of Owls - Freeform, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15519486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happygolovely/pseuds/happygolovely
Summary: They provide Barbara with a photograph of the target and brief biographical information.She pauses at the sight of her. God, she’s pretty. What a pity. Still, it will be fun to kill her.





	Physician, Heal Thyself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cherbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherbit/gifts).



The body remembers. Barbara drowns herself in wine, in women, in wanting. Covers her wrist in diamonds and pearls, silk gloves and satin ribbons. The scar underneath, the skin that slit still as raw as the day he cut off her mark. 

 

_ i love you i love you like no one has ever loved you, _

_ but if you try to escape i will chain you to the ceiling and gut you _

 

When he saw the mark on her wrist he took out his switchblade and tied her hands up above her head. “This is for us.” He said, simple and sure. “Nothing can keep us apart now.” 

 

As the blade digs into her she hears screaming and realizes it’s coming from her. He hushes her gently and digs his nail into the wound, still bleeding. Licks the blood off his thumb and smiles. 

 

“We don’t need these, do we? You know I’d still love you no matter what.” 

 

His own wrists covered in steel wires like shackles, he slides them off revealing blank skin. 

 

“Some people are just born without them, that’s all.” He hands her the knife. “If you like you can give me some scars. I’d take anything you wanted to give me.”  

 

She lunges out and drives the blade through the palm of his hand. He laughs as he pulls it out and wipes the blood off on her face as he cradles her cheek. “That was a very silly thing to do.” 

 

He brands her with his own name until she forgets her own. Steals the words out of her mouth. Rips out her language and deprives her of oxygen until all she can breathe is black water. Tar dripping down off his tongue, hot wax tears and bloodstained wrists. 

 

She takes him home to meet her parents and they say he’s such a nice man, so handsome. 

 

She kills them both because she can’t kill him. 

 

They find her afterward. The handlers sent by the agency. They wrap her up in blankets and take her back to headquarters. They tell her that losing her mark, her family, the pain pulsing beneath her skin - it’s all in the service of a greater purpose. Their purpose. 

 

They call themselves The Court and she bows willingly before them. 

 

They tell her to conquer, to kill. She does. She drinks champagne and wraps herself in chiffon and furs and the blood barely reaches her heels. Shadows press down on her from every side. 

 

She pulls the trigger and watches the mark fade from a man’s wrist.  

 

His name doesn’t matter, his death even less so. 

 

She cuts a line into her arm and gives herself a new mark of her own design. For every kill, another cut. The name of the man who killed her branded on her other wrist and with the rest of her skin she writes his death, the death of every man who would stand against her.     
  


Easier this way, no emotional entanglements. 

Love is weakness and she won’t be lessened ever again. 

 

She kisses Jim. Tabitha. Anybody. A hundred lovers reach for the hem of her skirt and she tells herself that the words they whisper into her thighs are just as good as what she had before. 

 

You don’t have only one soulmate. Different people awaken different things in you and Tabitha makes her feel like this is all she ever needs to be. Tabitha never asks to see her wrists and never shares her own. Every morning Tabitha wraps her wrists in black leather bands and Barbara can see the words shimmer, gold and grim. An omen of what’s to come. 

 

They will never have each other’s words, they are not the people destined for each other. 

 

They lie together in the dark and close their eyes and it’s almost close enough. 

 

Until the night Tabitha reaches for the band around Barbara’s wrist. 

 

Baraba slaps her across the face. 

 

She leaves in the morning on the back of her motorcycle and they don’t speak for six months. 

 

Barbara doesn’t need her, doesn’t need anyone. Champagne falls from her lips and drips down her skin, as she falls to the floor and begs for consecration. For resurrection. He used to call her angel and trace wings on her back. She wonders when she stopped being holy.

 

Pedestal ripped out from under her and the splinters of wood digging into her legs. 

 

All anyone can see is a woman on her knees. 

 

She gets the call on her burner phone the next day. New target. 

 

The Doctor operates out of the Narrows, funded by none other than the king of Gotham himself. On-call at all hours, they provide medical treatment to all the major criminals in the city.

 

Take out The Doctor and cripple the illegal healthcare infrastructure of the city. Easy. 

 

They provide Barbara with a photograph of the target and brief biographical information. 

 

She pauses at the sight of her. God, she’s pretty. What a pity. Still, it will be fun to kill her.     
  


 

Barbara loads up her arsenal and smiles. 

 

Time to make a house call. 

 

* * *

 

 

Lee’s wrist has been bothering her all day. She checks beneath her silver medical id bracelet (standard issue for healthcare professionals) and finds nothing. She doesn’t know what she expected. Her mark disintegrated five years ago, as she woke up screaming. 

 

She still doesn’t know what caused her soulmate to disappear all she can hope is that they are still alive somehow despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  

 

As she sits at her desk going over the bloodwork for her latest patient, she finds herself awash in regret. Regret not for the career she’s chosen but for the sacrifices she has made to keep her free clinic afloat. The funding had to come from somewhere and in a place like Gotham the money always came from one man. It seemed like a fair enough arrangement at first when she was just his personal physician. Every year he asks for more. First, she is asked to treat his staff at The Iceberg Lounge, then the contract killers and criminals on his retainer. 

 

In a few short years, he handed her the hospital and gave her complete control. With some provisions of course. Her free clinic continues to serve the lowest income families of Gotham and the people of the Narrows but she must no longer work there. All her time must be dedicated to treating the highest caliber of criminals, those who can afford his substantial membership fees. 

 

She refuses. He shows her the new budget for the free clinic, nearly tripled. She accepts.  

 

She knows she did the right thing by her patients but it's hard to reconcile the truth with the blood on her hands. The buzzer sounds and she sighs. Always on call. 

 

Lee makes her way to the front entrance, the elevator dings, and a woman steps out. Blonde, red dress, high slit going up to her thigh blood dripping down from her leg. She clutches her leg and winces in pain as she stumbles off the elevator. She drops her white fur coat off on the floor and presses her right wrist into the scanner and holds herself up for the retinal scan. Then she winks. 

 

“Helllooo nurse.” Her voice soft and sultry even as she’s bleeding. Lee looks at her again more closely. It might not even be her blood. The woman whistles at her and Lee quickly looks up. 

 

According to the information on the scanner, her name is Kestrel. Every patient and employee of the hospital is given a codename in order to further secure the secrecy of the underground facility. Codenames usually related to birds, a nod to their patron and a token to his narcissism. 

 

Lee’s own codename is Nightingale, a fact which she finds irritating on a frequent basis. 

 

The woman presses up against the bars meaningfully. “Can I come or what?” Lee presses the button and the gate swings open and the woman steps inside, collapsing against Lee immediately. 

 

Lee swears under her breath and reaches for her radio, ordering a gurney. The medic arrives in under two minutes and in the meantime her patient...the patient is playing with Lee’s hair. 

 

Her hair is pulled up into a bun but she’s taking it down, toying with the locks. 

 

She is currently making it crawl on her arm like a caterpillar. 

 

Lee rolls her eyes, wondering if the patient has tried to self-medicate. 

 

Whatever she’s taken, she’s clearly not in her right mind.  

 

As she loads the patient up onto the gurney, the woman clutches at her lab coat and Lee’s skin burns. The woman smiles, sharp and utterly insincere. She slaps the side of the gurney. 

 

“Take me away, boys.” The medic complies, wheeling her into the treatment room.     
  


The medic leaves the room and Lee pulls gloves on and kneels on the floor, pushing the hem of her dress to the side to inspect the wound. A long, angry gash on the side of her thigh. 

 

Lee’s hand holding her leg steady as she pulls a shard of glass from the cut with a tweezer. 

 

The woman giggles at her happily. “My, my Doctor are you sure that’s covered by insurance?” 

 

Convinced she’s removed all traces of glass and not terribly pleased with her patient, she applies a pressure pack just a little too harshly and the patient laughs as the bleeding stops. Lee pours iodine into the cut and the woman swears and nearly kicks her, Lee dodges easily.

 

“Now you are going to sit still and you are going to tell me what happened to you.”  

 

The woman pouts and flexes her foot. “You won’t play with me, you’re no fun.” She sighs. “I may have had a slight altercation at the docks with a certain mobster and ran into his knife.” 

 

Lee humms noncommittal and takes another look at the wound, judging by the angle of entry and the shards of glass self-inflicted with a bottle. She discreetly presses the call button for security in her lab coat pocket and puts them on standby. In the meantime, she sees to her patient. 

 

As long as she’s not a threat to any of the other patients, Lee has no objections to treating her. 

And it’s very possible that she’s a threat to herself all the more reason to look after her.  

 

She opens up the cabinet and reaches for the new, experimental antibiotic cream raided from Doctor Strange’s warehouse. The majority of her equipment is top of the line and absolutely illegal, most likely stolen. She doesn’t mind the ethics of it as long as it gets results.  

 

“If you could get up on the examination table please I will be with you in just a moment.”  

 

As she turns back around, the patient has draped herself over the exam table with her arm behind her head propped up like an especially gory renaissance painting. The red silk of her dress flows down off the table and is stained, although you can barely see the red of the blood past the fabric. 

 

Her eyes lit mischievous and malicious and Lee’s fingers ache for the emergency button once more. She works with criminals every day but there’s something about this one that unnerves her. 

  
Lee sets aside her discomfort and sits down on the stool next to her. “I’m going to need to elevate your leg while I apply this tincture, is that alright?”     
  


The woman nods and Lee places pillows under her knee to lift the leg up. The bleeding has completely stopped and she clears off the rest of it with a washcloth before applying the cream. 

 

Her touch is clinical yet not without kindness. There’s a tenderness to her that Barbara has not felt in years. How did something that soft survive in this city? It seems a shame to snuff it out. 

 

Then the cream starts to sting and her momentary lapse in apathy passes. 

 

“For the love of Gotham, what do you put in that stuff - turpentine?” 

 

Lee merely shakes her head. “Afraid not, that’s shoe polish actually.”  

 

“They didn’t tell me you’d be so mouthy.” Barbara mutters under her breath. 

 

“What was that then?” Lee peers up at her, hands perilously close to her injury. 

 

Barbara’s all smiles all of a sudden. “Nothing at all Nightingale, carry on.” 

 

She lounges back against the examination table and idly considers everything in the room. 

 

She has all of her own supplies naturally but there is a certain flair to killing one’s quarry with items from their own life. A needle full of something nasty? A scalpel perhaps? She finds a tray by the side of the table full of all sorts of delightful, sharp things. Palms one into her hand and slips it somewhere secret, the thrill of it all making her toes curl. Of course, that could just be the good doctor. It’s been a while since she’s had someone so - something aches at the inside of her thigh and when she looks down Doctor Tompkins is removing a patch of skin as if it was nothing. “Part of the procedure.” She assures her. 

 

Barbara raises an eyebrow but doesn’t complain. She’s certainly endured worse.  

 

Lee takes the sample to the 3-D BioPrinter and estimates the amount of coverage necessary. 

 

As she submits the sample into the container, it creates a flat gel-like coating to go over the skin. 

She presses it into Barbara’s wound and the gel seeps into the cut and cauterized and cleaned it, pulling the skin together as good as new. Better even. No scaring, no trace of anything. 

 

“We call this technology cobwebbing, it uses synthetic spider silk to repair and regenerate.” 

Lee’s eyes shine with excitement and pride at the through restoration process. Barbara whistles. 

 

“They give you the good stuff, huh?” Barbara stretches her leg out admiring the fresh skin. 

Then she swiftly kicks Lee in the solar plexus, the bite of her heel digging in. “Lucky me.”  

 

She aims upward to kick her again and Lee catches her ankle and twists. Barbara merely laughs. 

 

She lunges off the examination table, scalpel in hand and presses Lee to the cold tile floor. 

 

Her blonde hair shines under the fluorescent lights as she straddles her and forces her arms above her head.  She presses up against Lee’s clavicle and breathes deep and happy. “Antiseptic, mmmm. You must drive em crazy.” 

 

Lee struggles against her trying to reach the emergency button in her coat and Barbara shakes her head disapprovingly “Uh-uh, that’s not the game I want to play.” The scalpel slides through her hands, her smile widens as she runs the blade against her neck “I’m going to make you _ scream _ .” 

 

She cuts her throat and as Lee thrashes, her arm crashes down and the medical band breaks free revealing her mark. The very same mark Barbara had carved off her skin all those years ago. 

 

“No, no no no that’s not possible.” Desperately she reaches for the blood gushing out of her and the scalpel clatters forgotten to the floor. The hospital security team bursts through the doors and find her cradling Lee’s body hands frantically pressed against the wound. 

 

They drag her off the floor screaming, tears streaming down her face as the medical personnel rush to surround the doctor’s body on the floor. “Let me go!” She shrieks. 

  
They press a syringe into her neck and the last thing she sees before she blacks out is Lee. 

 

_ i’m sorrysorrysorry didn’t know it was you didn’t know oh dear god let me die instead  _  
  


* * *

 

 

Barbara wakes up underwater in a cell that is rapidly flooding. She aches for breath and swims to the surface, a glass ceiling. Wing-tipped shoes stand above her as she desperately clutches for air, fists banging against the glass. Oswald peers down at her beneath his feet and idly contemplates letting her drown. She certainly deserves worse. 

 

He sighs and reluctantly gives the order to have the cage drained.    
  


She still has information after all. 

 

He makes his way downstairs and finds her sitting at the center of the glass cage, curled up in a ball. He tuts at her like a scolding father. “Now, now don’t make that face at me. You were bad.” 

 

She says nothing, staring at her wrist. Blood on her knuckles and waterlogged. Utterly blank. 

 

“Why her?” He hits the glass with his cane until he gets her attention. “Anyone else in my organization, anyone else in this damn city I could understand but Saint Lee?” He scoffs.

”Surely you have better people to kill than that.”  

 

“There are no better people left now.” She looks up at him strangely. “She was the best of us.” 

 

“Going soft on her now that you’ve slit her throat?” His voice drips with saccharine disdain. 

 

Barbara picks at the skin of her wrist, pouring fresh salt into the wound. “It was a quick cut, clean. She bled out in under fifteen minutes. Consider it a professional courtesy.” 

 

She carefully ignores the jump of Lee’s pulse underneath her hands, still as strong as ever. 

A phantom limb, that’s all. To find her and lose her just as quickly - she barely had time to register what she had before she lost it. Everything Barbara has she destroys. 

 

Perhaps it’s better this way. By all accounts, the woman was a paragon of virtue. 

Barbara would never have deserved her in the first place. 

 

Oswald smiles, all teeth. “Do me one last courtesy then before I repay the favor. Tell me who gave the order to kill my doctor and I’ll ensure your death is just as efficient.”  

 

“No.” Barbara finally stands up and stares him down. “Make it long. Painful.  _ Agonizing _ .” 

 

He tilts his head consideringly. Barbara subtly shifts her bracelet to cover her wrist but not quickly enough. His confusion blooms into sudden understanding. He gestures carelessly to her wrist. “Go on then, give us a show. Don’t spare me the joy of waiting till you’re dead.” 

 

Definitely, she tears off the jewels and presses her wrist against the glass. The name of the man who killed her branded into her skin. It’s starting to fade and underneath - well those words were Lee’s to speak and she will never have a chance to say them. 

 

Oswald’s gaze turns shrewd and assessing. “If you’d like to die for her, I’m more than happy to oblige but you’re more useful to me above ground. Live for her instead.”  

 

She scowls and covers up her wrist again. “I don’t think Lee would appreciate that offer.” 

 

He smiles and does the first truly kind thing he’s done in years.    
  


“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”  

 

* * *

  
  


He takes her to a remote corner of the hospital that can only be accessed by his DNA signature.

 

A small white cot in a bare concrete room and Lee’s body lying there, her neck covered in bandages. The steady hum of her heartbeat monitor syncopates beneath Barbara's skin.    
  


 

“How is this possible?” She asks in wonder, her hand reaching to brush a strand of hair off Lee’s face. “There’s no way anyone could have survived that. I ought to know my trade well enough.” 

 

“Luckily you seem to have lost your edge. Perhaps it’s time for a career change.” Oswald stands at the edge of the bed looking discomforted by the affectionate display. ”Unless you would consider taking your talents elsewhere? There’s always room in my nest after all.”  

 

“You’d do that me?” Barbara asks suspiciously and with good reason too. 

 

“Not for you, no.” Oswald’s eyes turn once more to Lee and the uneven pattern of her breathing. “I was there that night when she thought she lost you. I’ve never heard such screaming not even in Arkham. If you ever so much as raise your voice to her again I will gut you where you stand, soulmate or not. Are we clear?” She nods and his smile turns dazzling. “Excellent. Now tell me about your former colleagues, your mission and lastly your intentions towards my employee.” 

 

“I work for an organization known as The Court of Owls.” 

 

“I suspected as much, how long have you been under their wing?” 

 

“About five years now. They recruited me for wetwork primarily.” 

 

“How many targets have you eliminated?” 

 

She rubs at her skin until her waterproof makeup dissolves, revealing cuts and scars. Thin black scars scattered all across her body. There must be over a hundred of them.

 

Oswald merely smiles and takes the numbers in stride. “Remind me to introduce you to Victor. Something tells me the two of you will get along swimmingly.”  

 

Barbara snorts. “If you see Zsasz tell him he still owes me for poker night.”  

 

Apparently, the assassination circle is a friendly one. 

 

He doesn’t acknowledge that absurd statement, focusing on the most pressing issue.

 

“You never did tell me what grudge they bare against Lee of all people.” 

 

As irritating as the woman can be, he’s developed a certain fondness for her. A fondness which is echoed and reinforced across all his territories. He made it clear some time ago that the physician was off limits and well guarded. No one had ever had reason to dispute this claim as her continued existence was a necessary good to people not used to goodness. A miracle. 

 

Until now at least. 

 

“You know very well it has nothing to do with her. You have made it abundantly clear how vital she is to your operations. The heart of the heartless king. They decided to cut it out of you.”

 

Oswald tugs at the silk sleeve of his shirt pulling it down past his wrist. “I can assure you, you have nothing to fear from me in that respect. My heart died with my mother. Although your point is taken and security needs to be tightened. I cannot afford to lose her and neither can you. For the time being, I am appointing you the head of Lee’s personal security.”  

 

Barbara’s smile is a fleeting thing, cold and callous. “You’d trust me with a thing like that and so soon after my last attack? You really are losing your touch, old man.”  

 

Oswald leans in menacingly. “They showed me the footage. The aftermath. You ruined her and yourself in the process. I trust you not to make such a foolish mistake once more.”  

 

She looked away, not wanting to acknowledge the truth. The grief freshly torn from her body and still raw around the edges. “I’d like some time with her. Alone.”  

 

“Yes, by all means, continue to mourn the living “ He threw up his hands in frustration. “You have two hours to consider my outrageously generous offer before it expires.” 

 

He left the room in a huff and a hobble.  

 

Barbara whistled low and unimpressed. “You know I think your boss might be worse than mine. And my bosses thought that killing people was an effective coping mechanism so that’s saying something.”  

 

Lee said nothing though she was expecting as much. Unconscious people aren’t the best conversationalists. 

 

She sat down at her bedside and stared at the woman who would have been hers had her life been different. She reached for the new medical band on Lee’s wrist, a thin paper thing and tore it aside. There, right there were the words she had stopped looking for and given up for dead. 

 

The words she nearly burned out of existence. Barbara dropped Lee’s hand back onto the cotton sheets, the last touch she would ever permit again between them. She didn’t deserve anything else. Didn’t deserve to find the other half of her soul when it was nothing like her own. 

 

All of the files, all of the information she had gathered prior to her mission made Thompkins out to be nothing short of a blessing, a benediction. She had discarded it as the grateful exaggerations of former patients. It was starting to sound truer by the minute. 

 

Barbara had long since stopped searching for any goodness in Gotham and now that she had found it she was certain she should stay as far away from it as possible. She couldn’t. 

 

If she were a better, less honest person she would say it was out of fear for Lee’s life or something equally noble and well-intentioned. Barbara was selfish and honest in her selfishness. 

 

She just wanted Lee. In whatever capacity she could have her. 

 

And because she was selfish she did this:

 

Leaned down and pressed a kiss to Lee’s forehead. Makes a vow. 

 

_ i’m not going to hurt you i’m not going to let anyone hurt you ever again _

 

* * *

 

 

The words on Lee’s wrist went black the moments she died. Then white, then silver and then they cycled back to gold glowing bright and flickering back into existence. 

 

Barbara spends three days in that small room sleeping on the floor beneath her cot. 

Three nights listening to the sound of her breath and memorizing the arch of her heartbeat, until her pulse sings beneath Barbara’s skin just as assuredly as if they shared lungs. 

 

Looking at the words on their wrist. Lining them up for comparison. Lee’s hands are much colder than hers, her heart so much warmer. Barbara traces the heart line on her palm. 

 

As she presses her nail into Lee’s palm, the heart monitor jumps and her eyes fly open. 

 

Barbara quickly drops her hand and smiles. Leans over the cot with her hanging down. 

 

“Morning angel, angel of the morning.” She laughs. “It’s so nice to see you up and alive.” 

 

Lee reaches for the emergency call button on the side desk and Barbara slaps her hand away. 

 

“Oh, you won’t be needing that. I promise to be good. Cross my heart and hope to die.”  

 

Lee calmly considers the situation and very rationally decides to start screaming. 

 

Barbara shoves her hand over Lee’s mouth and glares down at her. 

 

The manic shine in her eyes fades and the hard line of her jaw softens. 

 

“We got off on the wrong foot, I get that. Probably not the best introduction. I’m Barbara.” 

 

Lee bites her hand aggressively. 

 

Barbara kisses the back of her hand that covers Lee’s mouth. 

 

“Let’s try that again, shall we? I’m Barbara, I’m your soulmate and I tried to kill you but now I think I’d rather not because of those big brown doe eyes of yours. We good?”     
  


Lee nods. Barbara looks at her suspiciously and moves her hand. Lee reaches for Barbara’s wrist and catches her. 

 

“Prove it. My soulmate disappeared on me five years ago. Show me your mark.”  

 

Barbara winces and pulls away. “It’s not a pretty thing to see.”  

 

“Let me be the judge of that.” Lee pulls her arm closer. “I’ve seen worse trust me.”  

 

Barbara slowly unwraps the red silk ribbon and underneath it is the jagged edges of the love she will never know. She loved with everything she had and now she has nothing. She builds sanctuaries out of men who leave her and women...women who she shouldn’t have wanted in the first place. Perhaps this is her penance for loving in all the wrong ways with all the wrong sort. 

 

Lee touches the black ash slashed through her skin and the graveyard she has made of herself.  But even a grave grows and the letters will return. 

Above the ash is a man’s name but his brand is fading and fading fast. He should never have claimed her, she was never his to claim. 

 

“Do you feel that there?” Lee traces a line through the scars and she can make out the faintest hint of the letter  _ I  _ standing out amongst the withered flowers. “You’re blooming again.”  

 

Barbara tried to move out of her grasp but Lee holds her tight. 

 

“You haven’t taken this to a clinic before, have you? I can see the infection around the edges.” 

 

Barbara wraps herself up again as quickly as she can. “This is for your eyes only.”  

 

“Doctor-killer confidentiality.” Lee smiles wryly. Perhaps not the best time to rub salt in that particular wound but well, Lee can still feel the ache in her body and the metal on her neck. 

 

This particular sword goes both ways. 

 

Barbara opens her mouth to say something sardonic but closes it. For the best. 

 

Lee folds her hands together and looks at her assessingly. “So tell me: will you hurt me again?”  

 

“I can’t promise that I won’t. Not on purpose, not physically but I’m not an easy person to love.”  

 

Talk of love is much, much too soon but Lee neatly side steps over that. A problem for another day. “Nothing worth having has ever been easy. We’ll get there or we won’t.”  

 

“How are you so - you’re taking this much better than you should be.” 

 

It was strange. It was suspicious actually. 

 

Lee smiled faintly. “A failed assassination attempt is a Gotham ‘hello’. If I was angry with everyone who tried to kill me in this city I’d never have any friends. Except Lucius.”  

 

Barbara looked up at her through her eyelashes, almost shyly. “So you forgive me.”  

 

“Not at all and I don’t trust you either. You’re going to have to earn that.”  

 

Barbara was absolutely astonished. 

 

There was no way she would refuse her even though she knew she’d never be worthy of her. 

 

She would dedicate the rest of her life atoning for Lee’s death. 

 

It seemed like a worthy crusade. 

 

* * *

 

Barbara snuck off to the gift shop the next day and slammed a hundred down on the counter. 

 

“Give me flowers.” 

 

“Yes of course, mam. What kind would you like? We have lilies, roses, chrys-” 

 

She laughed. “I’m worried you misunderstand - give me all of the flowers you have.”  

 

The clerk was utterly flustered. “Mam, the cost alone is quite substantial not to mention-” 

 

She dropped off another hundred hundreds or so down and put another in his pocket. Winked. 

 

“Right away, as you please.”  

 

“There’s a good boy.” She clapped her hands together. “Now who wants to carry my things?”  

 

The clerk, the shop assistant, and the store manager followed her out the gift shop sometime later with all of the flowers and into the elevator. 

 

Barbara smiled, thinking of Lee’s face when she woke up surrounded by blossoms. Bright colors to cheer up this dreary, drab little underground facility. Really next time they spoke, she would insist Lee relocate the hospital to a more grand location. A hotel perhaps. 

 

At least they had a gift shop, you couldn’t say that for most illegal hospitals for criminals. 

 

As the elevator dinged for the next floor, she examined her reflection in the door. 

 

She had dolled herself up a bit for the dear doctor. 

 

Tight, white mini dress. Matte nude lipstick. White shoulder length caplet with black lining, black leather collar, and shoulders. Small silver watch hanging perfectly between her - 

 

White nearly nude fishnets with rhinestones for that extra bit of flair. She turned her ankle and picked a speck of dirt of her pristine white ankle boots with a sharp silver heel. 

 

To top it all of on top of her perfectly coiffed and curled tresses - a large nurse’s hat with a black stripe. She may not be the typical depiction of a nurse but she had a feeling Lee would enjoy this uniform much, much more. In truth, Barbara was worried she wouldn’t. 

 

Her charms and airs usually lasted until her playmates grew dull and she dropped them.

 

This was her  _ soulmate  _ quite a different thing altogether. And Barbara had a feeling  Lee wouldn’t be so easily won over by all her bells and whistles. 

 

She looked herself over in the mirror and whistled. But my my, what bells she had. 

 

The elevator stopped and Barbara was suddenly and rudely interrupted from her narcissistic haze by the arrival of half a dozen armed assassins. Oh sure, they were nicely dressed for assassins but as any old professional can tell you looks aren’t everything. Barbara sighed. If it were her life would be far, far easier. She slowly reached under the hem of her abnormally small dress and pulled out an abnormally large and long knife. Very sharp, very pointed not to belabor the point but it was quite scary. Though not nearly as scary as the look currently on her face.

 

“Gentlemen,” She said pleasantly. “I just had this dry-cleaned. Shall we reschedule?”  

 

Apparently not as they began to pull out guns and such. She sighed and pulled the emergency stop on the elevator. “Alright then, boys. Give it your best shot.”   

 

One of them fired right between her ear and the air, barely avoiding putting a bullet through her head. She stopped smiling and started stabbing. 

 

Sometime later she pressed the elevator button with her elbow as she was strangling a man with her thighs and he dropped to the floor, thoroughly suffocated. That’s the last of them. 

 

Under her feet, a communications device went off and she pulled it off the body, confirming the make and model before slipping it into her ear. A familiar voice came over the speaker. 

  
  


“Agent 37, status report I repeat Agent 3-” 

 

Barbara laughed high and haunting. 

 

“He’s dead and he better stay that way. Buh bye now. Kisses to Kathryn.”  

 

She pulled her heel out of a man’s eye socket, wiping the residue off on the wall and slipped it back on her foot just so she could crush the communicator, static crackling and fading. 

 

She scooped bloody, torn roses off the floor. The elevator dinged and she emerged. 

 

Her white ensemble covered in blood and flower petals. 

 

No one followed her. 

 

She skipped all the way to Lee’s room, happily oblivious to the horrified faces of the hospital staff and passersby. She swung open the door with gusto and dumped the bloody blundered bouquet out onto Lee’s bed above the covers. Her smile wide and fiercely proud.

 

“I got flowers.” She said needlessly, gesturing to the petal pulp. 

 

Lee raised her eyebrow. “I can see that. Well done you.”  

 

“Thank you.” She said utterly oblivious to the sarcasm or just not caring. Difficult to tell.

 

“May I ask who you killed to get me such a - such a display?”  

 

“The flowers I paid for, the killing was free. Speaking of which -” She leaned in conspiratorially. ”How’d you like to blow this popsicle stand?” 

 

“Is that really necessary? I’m still in recovery from -” She paused the weight of the knife between them still as present as ever. 

 

Barbara’s eyes slid to the floor. “Yes, well all the more reason to get you out of here now.” 

 

“My patients -”  

 

“You can’t help anyone if you’re dead, honeybunch.” 

 

“Fine. What’s our exit strategy?”  

 

Barbara clapped her hands together gleefully. “I thought you’d never ask.”  

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: happygolooony  
> twitter: happygoloverly


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